It’s time for our 8th annual Oscars-style montage of the year in musical breakups. If any of these bands are are unfamiliar to you, that might explain why they threw in the towel. Others you’ll recognize as once-famous groups who’ve finally stopped overstaying their welcome after years of running on fumes. There’s also a handful of Stereogum-beloved upstarts — like Chumped, Krill, and Ovlov — who broke up so soon we barely got to blog about them. Whatever the reason, good luck to all of these folks in their next projects! (While we reminisce about broken dreams, let’s also pour one out for the music businesses that died this year: RapidShare, Sharebeast, Grooveshark, This Is My Jam, Zune Music Service, Beats Music, Rdio, Bop.fm, XFM, MTV Iggy, and Columbia House. None was essential, but they all tried.) Please hold your applause until the end. Krill 4ever.

UPDATE: We’ve received word that Cotton Jones and Avi Buffalo are not over after all!